There was the usual dozen or so TK's there practicing with the weights, as well as twice as many who thought they were TK's trying to get the milligram weights to wiggle. About half of them were clustered around one table where a member from one of the other chapters was showing off by heaving at a two hundred and fifty gram weight. He was seated in the classic position, his elbows on the table, his fingers supporting his temples, and was concentrating fiercely on the weight.
He wasn't really up to it. I could see sweat starting from his brow as I watched him over the heads of the others at the table. Suddenly he dropped back, exhausted.
"Not tonight, Josephine!" he gasped. The man at his right, another stranger, chuckled, reached over to touch the weight with his finger tips and then TK'd it cleanly off the Formica. It was nice work, for a middleweight.
I looked in at a couple other workouts before wandering over to where Evaleen sat by herself in a corner. She was concentrating on a series of pith balls the size of peas that weighed from a tenth of a gram up. She was either so absorbed in what she was doing, or pretended to be, that she gave no sign of hearing me come up behind her. One of the balls before her struggled off the table top, and I could hear her breath hiss with the effort. Cheating a little, I felt for her lifts and gave her some help. One after another the balls floated up and sank back. She was utterly charmed—or pretended to be.
"Great going, Evaleen," I said, but she swore at me in Gaelic, an affectation, because she comes from Minnesota.
"You'd slip up behind me and help, eh?" she said hollowly.
"Get a touch, Evaleen," I suggested. "Have you tried it?"
"No," she said sullenly. She's good at that. Her dark hair is streaked with gray. She lets it hang down straight and whacks it off with hedge shears or something when it bothers her. Her face is lined and wrinkled far ahead of its time, and I swear, from the color of her teeth, that she chews betel nut. Somehow or other these PC witches have to act the part.
"Go ahead," I insisted. "Touch the first ball with the tip of your finger, Evaleen." I showed her what I meant by leaning over her shoulder. "That's right. Now lift!"
The pith ball rose smoothly several inches, and she held the lift for ten seconds or so.